With the iPad Pro and improvements to iOS and various iOS apps, I reached a point where I could do most or all of my required work on the road without bringing a Mac along. (I’ll get into some of the limitations below, because they still remain — and are frustrating reminders of how young this product still is.) I wasn’t going to leave the iPad behind, but I no longer needed to bring the Mac. My bag got lighter.

So when I review the new iPad Pro, it’s as someone who has chosen this platform as a tool to get work done around the house and on the road, in addition to all the other things the iPad excels at, like letting me read the news in the morning in bed while sipping my tea.

I simply love this review, and Snell’s perspective on the iPad in general, because Snell and I share a similar history, affinity, and expertise with the Mac. But he’s leaving me behind. I do travel with both an iPad and MacBook — but if I had to take only one it would be the MacBook, zero hesitation. I’m open to the notion that this is less about the iPad and more about me, personally.

But, I will object to one thing: the iPad feels like a young platform, yes, but it’s not young. It’s over 8 years old. Steve Jobs was still around to introduce it. When the Mac was 8 years old in 1992, System 7 had been launched and it was a very advanced platform, suitable for work of any kind. The new iPad Pro hardware might be the best consumer computer hardware ever made — the only rivals are the iPhone XS and XR. But software-wise, the iPad platform is nowhere near as far along after 8 years as the Mac was a generation ago. The iPhone is. But the iPad is not, and I don’t see how anyone can deny that.

The new $1,199 base-model MacBook Air comes with a 1.6GHz dual-core Core i5 processor with Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz. If you max out all of its specs, on the other hand, you’ll walk away with a $2,600 computer… with the very same 1.6GHz processor. Apple will let you expand storage (to 1.5TB) and memory (to 16GB), but the processor you get is the processor you get. […]

And it got me thinking: This feels like the future of the Mac, certainly on the consumer end of the product line. With the new MacBook Air, Apple has picked a processor and stuck with it. Would any of us be surprised if it did the same with a future update to the MacBook? Or low-end iMacs?

I am convinced this is the future of the Mac. The thing to keep in mind is that Apple’s A-series chips — like the A12 and A12X — aren’t just CPUs. They’re entire systems-on-a-chip. They are integrated wholes. It just doesn’t make sense to offer configurable CPU upgrades in an SoC context. Instead, you make a great SoC and offer configurable storage and RAM.

One reason the new MacBook Airs all share the same CPU is that it’s the only CPU from Intel right now that meets the MacBook Air’s power requirements. But count me in with Snell — I think configurable CPU options are going the way of removable batteries and optical drives. And I welcome it. I hate CPU options. I never know what to buy; how best to balance performance and power consumption. I want Apple’s system architects to do all the work to make the decision for me — to find the perfect balance.

On older Macs, the headphone jack and the internal speakers are essentially separate ports on a single output device, and only one of these ports is allowed to be active at a time. Because of this, audio can be sent to either the built-in speakers, or the headphone jack, but not to both. As well, if anything is connected to the headphone jack, the OS shuts off the built-in speaker completely.

With these new Macs, there are actually two distinct output devices. The headphone jack and the internal speakers are separate devices, completely independent from one another.

In 1977, the great computer scientist Donald Knuth published a paper called The Complexity of Songs, which is basically one long joke about the repetitive lyrics of newfangled music (example quote: “the advent of modern drugs has led to demands for still less memory, and the ultimate improvement of Theorem 1 has consequently just been announced”).

I’m going to try to test this hypothesis with data. I’ll be analyzing the repetitiveness of a dataset of 15,000 songs that charted on the Billboard Hot 100 between 1958 and 2017.

Clever technique.

Saturday, 17 November 2018

My thanks to Square for sponsoring this week at DF. You might know Square from their little white card readers, but for developers they have a suite of APIs and SDKs to help you take payments — both in-person and online. Square Reader SDK allows you to use Square hardware to take payments directly in your app. Check out their website to see their cookie-selling demo app, with complete source code to simulate everything a Girl Scout would need to sell cookies.

In order to manufacture the USB-C to Lightning cable, a new “C94
Lightning connector” is necessary, it explains that it becomes
a maximum 15W power supply specification in the case of
non-USB-PD and 18W charging is supported in the case of USB-PD
compatible. […]

As it is in the stage of USB-C to Lightning Developer Preview,
third party USB-C to Lightning cable is expected to be released in
mid-2019.

A few things to unpack here. “PD” stands for Power Delivery, a protocol for providing power up to 100W by switching to higher voltage. This is an alternative to Qualcomm’s Quick Charge standard in use on some Android phones. Standard USB is fixed at 5V and max current of 2.1A. 5V × 2.1A = ~10W max. Apple’s fastest non-PD USB charger is the 12W charger that came with older iPad Pros. That one does 5.2V × 2.4A = 12.48W. (You can see the output volts and amps in the small print on all chargers.)

With a PD power supply, chargers support multiple output configurations, and the devices negotiate which to use via a handshake. Apple’s old 29W charger supported two output configurations (photo):

The next thing to understand is that MFI certification requires vendors to source their Lightning connectors from Apple.1 The old connectors don’t support PD, and the new connectors that do aren’t yet available to third parties. Basically, this is why the only option for officially certified USB-C to Lightning cables remains Apple’s own 1m and 2m cables.

Yes, there are some no-name brand USB-C to Lightning cables available on Amazon right now. Amazon even labels one of them “Amazon’s Choice”. But they aren’t MFI-certified and I don’t think any of them support more than 10W. Personally, I would never trust these uncertified cables. The reviews on Amazon are full of complaints that they fail after a few weeks, and honestly I wouldn’t trust them in terms of safety. I get wanting to charge Lightning devices from USB-C chargers and MacBooks, but if you don’t want to buy Apple’s own cables (which admittedly are expensive) you might as well just use an old USB-A to Lightning cable and a USB-C to USB-A adapter, because you’re still limited to the non-PD charging limits. The no-name brand USB-C to Lightning cables available today do not support PD, are not certified, and are limited to 12 watts. There’s a reason they only come from no-name brands.

It’s small consolation to those of us looking for high-quality third-party USB-C to Lightning cables and adapters today, but it does sound like they’ll start appearing in the second quarter of 2019.

The iPhone and USB-C

This brings me to a second point, which feels at least tangentially related to this whole USB-C to Lightning situation. Now that the iPad Pros have switched to USB-C, there are a lot of people — possibly most of you reading this — who think/hope Apple is going to switch the iPhone from Lightning to USB-C next year.

I don’t think that’s going to happen, ever. I could be wrong — there are definitely some compelling reasons why they might. But I don’t think they will for a few reasons.

First, Apple likes having complete control over the iPhone peripheral market. Consider iPhone cases that include a built-in battery pack. There aren’t many of them. Apple only recently approved Mophie’s battery pack for the year-old iPhone X. Battery packs are difficult — they block inductive charging and they can interfere with the phone’s antennas. That’s why Apple’s own battery case for the iPhone 7 had such a seemingly weird hump-on-the-back design: that design kept the battery from interfering with the antennas. It’s in Apple’s interest to certify that third-battery cases don’t interfere with antenna reception, because if they did interfere, people would naturally blame the iPhone for the poor reception, not the case.

But Apple wields its MFI control in other ways too. In a Twitter thread Wednesday, Nilay Patel pointed out there has never been an MFI-certified battery case with a headphone jack. This almost certainly is not because no one thought to make one, but rather that Apple will not approve them. Apple clearly thinks external battery packs (connected to iPhones via a cable) are a better solution than cases with integrated batteries. With Lightning, they can effectively control this. If the iPhone were to switch to USB-C, I don’t think they could stop anyone from making USB-C battery cases. I do not think Apple will cede this control.

Second, the nerd world may clamor for one universal connector that charges everything from iPhones to iPads to MacBooks, but the normal world just wants their existing cables to keep working when they buy a new iPhone. Lightning is obviously better than the old 30-pin adapter — the old 30-pin connectors look ridiculous in hindsight. But people upgrading from older iPhones were outraged when Apple introduced Lightning with the iPhone 5 in 2012. They saw it as a money grab — a new port introduced so everyone would have to buy new cables. The fact that you wouldn’t have to buy USB-C cables from Apple wouldn’t change that perception if future iPhones switch to USB-C — nerds might rejoice but regular folks will object.

For however many iPhone users there are who are upset that iPhones continue to use the proprietary Lightning port when they could, technically, use USB-C instead, I would bet big money there are way more who just want Apple to keep using Lightning because they already have Lightning cables everywhere they need them. It’s also almost certainly true that there are way more iPhone owners who do not own either an iPad or MacBook than there are iPhone users who also own an iPad or MacBook. These iPhone owners don’t care that the new iPad Pro and recent MacBooks have switched to USB-C. And even those iPhone owners who do own an iPad or MacBook are very unlikely to own the brand-new $800-and-up iPad Pro, and their MacBooks are most likely models with MagSafe.

Third (and admittedly a distant third at that), Lightning connectors and ports are smaller. Sure, at 5.9mm thick, the new iPad Pros are the thinnest iOS devices ever,2 and they use USB-C. But still, it’s easier to make a thinner device with a smaller connector. I also think Lightning connectors are more pleasant to use. They’re easier to plug in and easier to pull out. Lightning is a simple, elegant male/female design. USB-C, like all previous USB versions, is a weird male connector with female slot / female port with a tiny little male connector inside. USB-C certainly has some technical advantages over Lightning, but iPhones don’t need those features. The elegance (and I suspect durability) of Lightning probably matters more to Apple.

So:

Apple would prefer to maintain MFI control over all iPhone peripherals.

Most iPhone users would be displeased, at least in the short-term, by a switch to USB-C.

Lightning is smaller and more elegant than USB-C and Apple prefers smaller and more elegant.

I think iPhones will stick with Lightning until wireless charging is fast enough that Apple can remove all ports, Apple Watch-style.

In fact, I don’t think regular (non-Pro) iPads will switch to USB-C either. Apple is pitching the iPad Pros’ switch to USB-C based on actual professional features — driving external 5K displays, using PC-class peripherals, and support for very high-power charging. The only one of those that might apply to regular iPads is faster charging, which is always nice to have, but even that wouldn’t matter much to most iPad users, who (a) stick with whatever charger Apple supplies in the box, and (b) choose extra chargers based on price, not output wattage. (Spec-knowledgeable nerds have trouble believing this, but many iPhone users love the wimpy 5W charger Apple includes with iPhones because it’s so small.)

Lightning Gadgets

When I think of Lightning-powered devices I tend to think of iPhones and iPads. But over the last few years, Apple has put Lightning ports into a bunch of battery-powered gadgets:

Most of those aren’t related to iPhones at all — the iPhone could switch to USB-C and it wouldn’t really matter if these gadgets stayed on Lightning. Except for one: the AirPods charging case. That’s the one that is intimately tied to iPhone use in daily life. You really want to be able to charge your AirPods case with the connector you’re most likely to have handy, and that’s your phone charger.

There were rumors that Apple might ship next-generation AirPods this year. (There still are rumors they might ship this year, in fact, even though at this date that doesn’t seem very likely.) That would have been an interesting hint regarding the future of the iPhone’s charging port. I really don’t think Apple would launch a second generation of AirPods now, and sell them all through next year, only to change the iPhone’s charging port to USB-C in September.

If Apple had announced second-generation AirPods this year, and the new cases still had Lightning ports, I’d take that as a strong sign that next year’s iPhones will too. And if they had shipped without Lightning ports (using inductive charging instead, perhaps, like Apple Pencil 2), I’d be a little less willing to bet that next year’s new iPhones will stick with Lightning. But Apple has not announced new AirPods (or even just new AirPod cases), nor recent updates to any of its Lightning-powered gadgets other than Pencil, so we don’t have any clues to glean on this front. ★

MFI licensees sign non-disclosure agreements with Apple with exorbitant financial penalties. So, they tend not to talk. But one little birdie I spoke with recently said that last year, for months, there simply were no Lightning connectors available to third parties, because Apple was consuming the entire supply because they were including three with each iPhone 8 and iPhone X — one for the cable, one for the headphones, and one for the headphone adapter. These supply constraints make me wonder if that’s why this year’s new iPhones still ship only with USB-A Lightning cables and chargers — Apple may not have felt confident in the supply of the new Lightning connectors that work with USB-C PD charging speeds. If they had included a USB-C to Lighting cable with every iPhone XS and XR, they’d have needed at least 50 million new Lightning connectors this quarter, and they apparently don’t even have enough to sell them to MFI licensees until some time next year. ↩︎

Remember the iPod Touch? Apple still sells them, but they’re so long in the tooth they still use iPhone 6-class A8 chips. I think the plethora of old hand-me-down iPhones has really put a crimp the market for iPod Touches. I can’t even remember the last time I heard someone say “iTouch”. ↩︎︎

Anything is possible, but I’d find it a bit strange if Apple released new AirPods this year. If they were going to be ready for the holidays, why wouldn’t they have announced them at the event in Brooklyn two weeks ago? Why would they release a holiday gift guide listing the current AirPods as the second item on the list?

People are already buying holiday gifts, and gift-buying reaches its manic peak next week with Black Friday. People who are buying $160 AirPods now — on Apple’s own recommendation — would be justifiably angry if AirPods 2 come out before the holidays.

And what about inductive charging? Last year Apple promised a new charging case for AirPods that would work with the still-missing-don’t-talk-about-it AirPower charging mat. I don’t think they were going to use the Qi standard for that, but instead something proprietary like Apple Watch uses. If they still plan on supporting this, would they launch new AirPods now even while AirPower is totally missing? How do you launch AirPods with inductive charging without a way to inductively charge them? And if they still plan on shipping AirPower in the even vaguely near future, would they ship new AirPods without support for it?

Calling for an “immediate end” to the recount in Florida, Donald J. Trump warned on Monday that it could set a dangerous precedent of the person with the most votes winning.

Speaking to reporters at the White House, Trump said that those in favor of the recount had a “sick obsession with finding out which candidate got the most votes.”

“Democrats are going on and on about counting every last vote until they find out who got the most,” Trump said. “Since when does getting the most votes mean you win?”

Under Trump, the line between satire and news is ever more blurred. The above is a more fair, more accurate description of Trump’s reaction to these close elections than anything in the supposedly straight news.

Tuesday, 13 November 2018

Here’s a thread on Reddit asking why there aren’t any USB-C to Lightning cables from reliable, certified companies like Anker, Monoprice, and Amazon. It’s a year-old thread and the situation is unchanged. This stinks now that all MacBooks and the new iPad Pros have gone to USB-C, along with chargers that output by USB-C.

I have this Anker 30-watt charger, for example. It’s a terrific product — nice size, great build quality, and just $26. (Apple’s 30-watt charger is $50.) Another great charger is Apple’s new 18-watt charger that’s included with the new iPad Pros (but which, oddly, is not yet available for purchase separately). These chargers all use USB-C for output. So if you want to use them to charge a Lightning device — like, say, your iPhone — you need a USB-C to Lightning cable, and your only certified options are Apple’s 1-meter and 2-meter cables. Apple’s cables aren’t bad, but (a) they cost $19 and $35, respectively; and (b) the 1-meter cable is awfully long to be the shortest cable for this. I like having 6-inch cables for traveling, for plugging my phone into my MacBook to charge overnight.

What’s the deal here? Is there a technical issue? Or is Apple just spitefully keeping this market to itself? It really seems like a raw deal when you consider that Apple still doesn’t include a USB-C to Lightning cable with new iPhones.

Monday, 12 November 2018

Some people are influences. Others — a rare few — rearrange the
very structure of your neurons. Stan Lee’s creative and artistic
contribution to the Marvel pantheon has been debated endlessly,
but one has only to look at Jack Kirby’s solo work to see what
Stan brought to the partnership: an unshakable humanism, a faith
in our human capacity for altruism and self-sacrifice and in the
eventual triumph of the rational over the irrational, of love over
hate, that was a perfect counterbalance to Kirby’s dark,
hard-earned quasi-nihilism. In the heyday of their partnership, it
was Stan’s vision that predominated and that continues to shape my
way of seeing the world, and of telling stories about that world,
to this day.

There’s something apt about Chabon using a primarily visual medium like Instagram as an outlet for the perfect words to remember a man whose life’s work was writing for comic books.

Traditionally, comics were drawn from a screenplay-like script
provided by the writer. Instead, Mr. Lee said, he would offer his
artists plot ideas and brainstorm with them. The artists would
then draw the story, and he would later fill in dialogue and text.

Artists in his “bullpen,” where the artists worked in proximity to
each other and to him, were much more involved in the creative
process. This became known as the Marvel Method.

Saturday, 10 November 2018

My thanks to Universe for sponsoring Daring Fireball this week. Universe is the first website builder designed from the ground up for iOS. Building a website should be fun and creative, so Universe doesn’t have templates. Themes, yes. Templates, no. Instead, Universe uses an open-ended grid and a constantly expanding array of “blocks” for content types, which makes building a site as fun as playing with Legos. Design a store (they’ve partnered with Shopify), create a portfolio, or start a magazine right from your iPhone.

Just this week, they released a major 2.0 update, including full support for iPads — just in time for the new iPad Pros. (Universe already supports the new iPad Pro screen sizes and round corners perfectly.)

I really just love the idea of owning and creating your own website. Universe offers a really original take on how to actually do this, and the fact that it started as an iPhone app means the iPhone is a first-class device for using it. I really think it’s one of the most interesting creative apps for iPhone and iPad that I’ve seen. Trust me, download Universe and just poke around for a while — it’s deeper than you think. Try it out free of charge on the App Store.

Month-old news at this point, but I only just now got around to reading Grant Brisbee’s spot-on summary of game 4 of the ALDS, the best single game, by far, of the entire postseason:

But this is it. This is the baseball experience. You build up the
energy over 162 games, and you store it and hope for the best, and
the radiation becomes too much, and now the parakeet is dead.
Great. Except that’s exactly what you want. You want the release
after 162 games, the progressive jackpot paying off.

Baseball is a ponzi scheme, except it really does pay off
occasionally, and when it does, you get everything that you
promised.

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

Amidst last week’s event and diving into testing the new iPad Pros and MacBook Air, I didn’t find time to comment on Apple’s quarterly results. Let’s catch up. Here’s Apple’s press release, which includes links to their data summary. Long story short, compared to the same quarter last year:

iPad unit sales and revenue were down a bit.

Mac unit sales were down just under 2 percent but revenue was up over 3 percent — so mostly flat.

iPhone unit sales were flat but revenue was up a whopping 29 percent. The iPhone X (and now XS) is a hit.

Services and “Other Products” were up too, 17 and 31 percent, respectively. I take this to mean AirPods and Apple Watch are growing like crazy. Anecdotal observation everywhere I go backs this up.

For all the fretting for the future of the Mac — the widely held notion that Apple wants everyone to move from the Mac to iPad, that these totally shitty Marzipan apps in Mojave are the future, that the Mac is “legacy” — here is some cold, hard, financial proof that the Mac is doing as well as ever. Not only was the Mac far ahead of the iPad in terms of revenue, it’s downright amazing that it amounted to one-fifth the revenue from the iPhone.

No More Unit Sale Numbers for iPhone, Mac, and iPad

Third, starting with the December quarter we will no longer be
providing unit sales data for iPhone, iPad, and Mac. As we have
stated many times, our objective is to make great products and
services that enrich people’s lives, and to provide an
unparalleled customer experience so that our users are highly
satisfied, loyal, and engaged. As we accomplish these objectives,
strong financial results follow. As demonstrated by our financial
performance in recent years, the number of units sold in any
90-day period is not necessarily representative of the underlying
strength of our business. Furthermore, a unit of sale is less
relevant for us today than it was in the past, given the breadth
of our portfolio, and the wider sales price dispersion within any
given product line.

This stinks as an observer of the company, but I don’t find it at all surprising. None of Apple’s competitors release unit sale numbers for phones, tablets, or PCs. I think it’s more surprising that it took Apple so long to make this change. Secretive company decides to be more secretive — news at 11.

After Tim Cook announced at the outset that they were never going to reveal Apple Watch unit sale numbers, and it played out just fine, I began wondering if Apple would switch to that policy for all of their products. There’s nothing special about Apple Watch in that regard.

I wish it weren’t so, but I don’t blame Apple for making this change. I also don’t think it has anything to do with Apple expecting bad unit sale numbers in the near future. Apple doesn’t make policy changes like this with the near term in mind. This change will affect what they announce in all quarters, for years to come, whether unit sales are good, bad, or middling. Apple is a long-term company, not a short-term one.

HomePod was an abject failure, and the AirPower wireless charging
pad is missing in action. But Apple Watch Series 4 is getting rave
reviews, and the sleeper hit, the AirPods, will likely do well
when that product gets updated. A refresh of its Mac lineup is
nice, but it’s destined to remain a niche product in a market
where people are less interested in buying computers.

HomePod may well be a disappointment, but “abject failure” seems a bit harsh. A few weeks ago Strategy Analytics pegged HomePod’s share of the U.S. “smart speaker” market at just 4 percent. That sounds terrible. But they also pegged HomePod’s share of the $200-plus smart speaker market at 70 percent. At $350, HomePod is nearly double $200. Maybe Apple ought to make a $100 HomePod Mini or something, but given what HomePod is and what it costs, it seems like a typical Apple product: dominating the high end of the market, overall market share be damned.

And to revisit a sentiment from above, I don’t get Culpan’s argument that the Mac constitutes a “niche”. $7.4 billion in revenue — in a quarter during which the most popular Macs were all overdue for updates — is one hell of a niche.

Also, not to keep picking nits with one paragraph, but AirPods are “doing well” right now, without an update. Given that Apple had nothing to say about AirPods last week, it seems pretty clear that AirPods aren’t getting an update this year. I still expect them to sell in record numbers as holiday gifts. ★

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

The bit about performance-per-watt (around the 2:50 mark) seems like an argument Apple will be making again, this year or next, when they announce Macs running with Apple’s in-house ARM chips. Really, the argument is going to be exactly the same: Apple has ideas for future Macs that they can’t build using Intel chips. (Via Peter Zopf.)

What we can all do at this moment is vote — get up, brush our
teeth, go to the polling place, and get in line. I was never in
combat as a soldier, but now I am. Those of you who haven’t quite
been getting to your polling place lately, who want better
candidates or a clearer system of making yourself heard, or who
just aren’t in the habit, need to get it done this time around.
If you stay home, count yourself among the hundreds of thousands
now being disenfranchised by the relentless parade of
restrictions that Republicans everywhere are imposing and
enforcing. If you don’t vote, they have won, and you are a
captive, one of their prizes.

Tuesday, 6 November 2018

The elephant in the room at last week’s Apple event was Intel.

Apple introduced two products based on Intel chips — the new MacBook Air and new Mac Mini — but barely mentioned the company’s name. The word “Intel” appeared on a single slide during VP of hardware engineering Laura Legros’s presentation of the new MacBook Air. She also spoke the word once, saying the new Airs have “the latest Intel integrated graphics”. In the presentation of the new Mac Mini, “Intel” never appeared in a slide and wasn’t mentioned. The CPUs in the new Mini were simply described as 4-core and 6-core “8th generation” processors.

One slide, one mention.

Apple is not going to throw Intel under the bus — they’re taking an “If you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” approach, as they should. Macs are Apple’s products, not Intel’s, and it’s ultimately Apple’s responsibility that both of these products went so long between updates. But Apple’s frustration with Intel as a partner is palpable at this point. Look no further than the other product introduced at the same event, the new iPad Pro. Apple spent an entire segment talking about the A12X chip in the iPad Pro and the performance it delivers. They spent almost no time talking about the performance of the CPU or GPU in the new MacBook Air. Performance is actually pretty good for the price and for the intended audience of the MacBook Air — but only when compared against other Intel-based notebooks. When compared against the iPad Pro, it doesn’t look good at all.

Single-Core

Multi-Core

Compute

2018 MacBook Air With Retina

4,316

7,847

22,048

$999 Old MacBook Air

3,335

6,118

14,570

2018 iPad Pro

5,007

18,051

42,574

iPhone XS

4,851

10,534

21,869

15" MacBook Pro w/ 2.9 GHz Core i9

5,653

21,737

59,010

What we’re seeing here is a double whammy. On the one side, Apple’s custom silicon team is firing on all cylinders, delivering new A-series chips year after year with ever-more-incredible performance and efficiency. On the other side, Intel has missed deadlines, and what they have shipped often isn’t impressive. In fact, when Apple did spend time bragging about the performance of the new MacBook Air’s chips, they were talking about the T2, the Apple-designed “security chip” that does a hell of a lot more than just manage security features. Even before they’ve moved away from Intel chips, Apple is boasting about the performance of their own custom silicon, not Intel’s.

Behind the scenes last week in New York, I asked a few folks from Apple for any sort of hint why these two Macs — the MacBook Air and Mac Mini — went so long between updates. One thing I was told is that Apple wants to focus on “meaningful updates”. The days of “speed bump” updates are largely over. The value just isn’t there.

The new MacBook Air is a meaningful update. It is faster, smaller, thinner, and lighter, with a terrific retina display (finally), vastly improved speakers, Apple’s terrific Force Touch trackpad, and more. If there’s a blessing in the long wait for this new MacBook Air to appear, it’s that it debuts with the third-generation of Apple’s butterfly keyboard. The Air skipped the bad keyboards.

The iPad lineup has seen meaningful updates on a regular basis not because Apple cares more about iPads than MacBooks, but because Apple controls the system architecture of iPads and they don’t control it on MacBooks — Intel does. Apple sells more iPad units than Macs, but the Mac accounts for significantly more revenue. Apple should love the Mac because it’s a fantastic platform — but they should also love it because it makes the company a lot of money.

Look at the iPad’s A12X compared to the iPhone’s A12 and you can see how much attention Apple is paying to the iPad’s system architecture. There’s no reason they won’t pay as much or more attention to the Mac’s custom silicon when they switch from Intel to their own chip designs. It should be downright glorious.

But that’s the future. In the present, we’ve got this new MacBook Air, and it’s pretty damn sweet.

Overview

There’s only one CPU option for the new MacBook Air: “1.6GHz dual‑core 8th‑generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 3.6GHz”. There are no build-to-order CPU options. I could be wrong, but off the top of my head, I think this is a first for a Mac notebook in the Intel era. MacBook Pros have a slew of different CPU options. The 12-inch MacBook, surprisingly, has three CPU options. Even the base model non-retina MacBook Air has two CPU options.

Why? I hate picking a CPU. Putting cost aside, I never know what the right balance is between performance and battery life. These are the sort of decisions I want Apple to make. That’s what they do with iPhones and iPads.

When you order a new MacBook Air, the only choices you make (other than color) are how much storage you want and how much RAM (8 or 16 GB). That’s it, and that’s how it should be.

I’ve been using a space gray model with 8 GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD storage since late last week. I’m glad to be testing a model with the base 8 GB of RAM — this is the configuration that most people will actually buy and use. I use a lot of RAM because I tend to keep a lot of apps open and a lot of tabs — too many tabs — in Safari. My personal MacBook is a 13-inch MacBook Pro from 2014 with 16 GB of RAM. I’ve been thinking about buying a new 13-inch MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM. (I really need to clean up my Safari tabs more often.) Update: The problem, of course, is that currently only 15-inch MacBook Pros support more than 16 GB of RAM. My desired 13-inch MacBook Pro with 32 GB of RAM doesn’t (yet) exist.

I’ve been using this device heavily over the last few days — as heavily as I could while simultaneously testing the new iPad Pro, at least — and performance has been great. The system is swapping, but I honestly don’t notice. SSD performance is that good.

If you don’t know whether you need the upgrade to 16 GB of RAM, you don’t need it. I would recommend the base 8 GB configuration to just about any typical user.

The display is excellent even if it’s not Apple’s best. MacBook Pro displays offer 500 nits of maximum brightness; the new MacBook Air offers only 300 nits, according to Apple. MacBook Pros also offer wide color gamut (P3), and the models with the Touch Bar also offer True Tone. They also start at $1,800. Everyone who’s been waiting for a retina MacBook Air should be pleased by this display — it’s sharp, accurate, well-balanced, and more than bright enough.

The form factor is just about perfect. It’s noticeably thinner and lighter than a 13-inch MacBook Pro and noticeably more modern-looking than the old Air. One thing that Apple doesn’t get enough credit for in their latest notebooks is the quality of the display hinge. Metal now, not plastic, these hinges have just the right amount of resistance — they’re easy to open, easy to close, and easy to adjust to the perfect viewing angle. It’s obvious when you look at the industry and see what size notebooks are the most popular, but a 13-inch display really is perfect as the default size for most people.

These butterfly keyboards are polarizing. Some love them, some hate them. I’m in the middle. I like a laptop keyboard with a clickier feel and more travel than these keyboards, but with this third generation, the keys do snap back a bit more than they did in the first two generations. I’ve lost count of the number of people I’ve seen asking for Apple to make a MacBook keyboard with Touch ID but without the Touch Bar. Well, here it is. The only problem I’ve run into with Touch ID is that I just spent the last week with a new iPad Pro with Face ID, which is even better.

The Esc key works perfectly.

Battery life has been outstanding. Apple’s tech specs suggest this new MacBook Air should get better battery life than any other MacBook, Pro or not. I believe it.

Here’s a nice little touch: the Apple logo stickers included with the Getting Started packet are color-matched to the device. Space gray stickers for a space gray MacBook Air. Maybe this isn’t new, but I hadn’t noticed it before.

The Modern MacBook and the End of an Era

With this update the MacBook Air falls in line with Apple’s modern MacBook design language:

Aluminum color options (space gray, silver, gold)

Butterfly keyboards

Large Force Touch trackpads

USB-C/Thunderbolt 3 ports for power and peripherals

There are some cool things about the old designs that I miss:

MagSafe. USB-C plugs are hard to pull out. MagSafe was easier to connect and disconnect. The magnetic charging of the new Apple Pencil reminds me quite a bit of MagSafe. It was just such a great idea. I miss the charging indicator light on the MagSafe connector too.

The glowing Apple logo on the back. I’m happy to trade it for a thinner display, but I do miss it. It was just such an iconic aspect of Apple’s Mac notebooks, going back to the PowerBook era. I noticed a bunch of the black-and-white “Behind the Mac” images Apple showed in a short film on stage last week in Brooklyn prominently featured glowing Apple logos on MacBooks.

The new arrow key layout. I’m getting used to the feel of these butterfly keyboards in general, but I cannot get used to the new arrow key layout. I want my upside-down T layout back.

Making Sense of Where This New Air Fits in the MacBook Lineup

But the more I think about it, the more I think that something
along the lines of the “just put a retina display in the MacBook
Air” scenario seems the most likely. Nomenclaturally it makes no
sense. The computer named just-plain “MacBook” should logically be
the one that is the baseline best-selling model for the masses.
The one named “Air” should be the one that is as thin and
lightweight as is feasible. But today we’re three years into the
era when the just-plain MacBook is the radically thin and light
model, and the Air is the best-selling baseline model that isn’t
really any thinner or lighter than the Pro models. Well, so what?
We drive on parkways and park on driveways and no one is
confused.

And so here we are, with a new MacBook Air that really is the MacBook for almost everyone, and a just-plain MacBook that is the MacBook for those willing to pay a premium — both in dollars and performance — for an ultra thin and light form factor.

These new MacBook Airs are terrific computers at fair prices. But the overall state of Apple’s notebook lineup is a bit of a mess at the moment. Here are your options if you’re looking to spend about $1,000-1,500 on a Mac notebook:

The old non-retina MacBook Air, which still starts at $1,000.

The new MacBook Air, which starts at $1,200.

The 12-inch MacBook, which starts at $1,300.

The 13-inch MacBook Pro without the Touch Bar — a.k.a. the MacBook Escape — which starts at $1,300.

The $200 difference between the $1,000 non-retina Air and new $1,200 retina Air is quite possibly the best $200 value you can spend in the Apple Store. The $1,000 MacBook Air is a machine I wouldn’t recommend to anyone; the $1,200 MacBook Air is a machine I’d recommend to anyone who doesn’t need more than 128 GB of storage.

The non-retina MacBook Air has a CPU upgrade for $150, but even with that upgrade it’s still slower than the new MacBook Air. I understand why the $999 Air is still in the lineup — so that Apple can say they have a notebook at $999. I have no idea why the $1,150 configuration of the old Air is still there. It seems like a rotten deal next to the new MacBook Air.

The entry model of the 12-inch MacBook comes with 256 GB of storage. The other entry models — including the MacBook Pro without Touch Bar — come with 128 GB of storage. Upgrading from 128 to 256 GB of storage costs $200 for all of these devices. These prices start to make more sense when you consider that. For 256 GB of storage and 8 GB of RAM:

New MacBook Air: $1,400

12-inch MacBook: $1,300

13-inch MacBook Pro: $1,500

The 12-inch MacBook is for people who want the very thinnest and lightest MacBook they can get. It weighs 3/4 of a pound less than the new MacBook Air, which is significant.

It’s not clear at all who the MacBook Pro without Touch Bar is for today, though. In principle, it’s for people who want higher performance than the MacBook Air provides. In practice, it’s not much faster — about the same in single-core, and about 15 percent faster in multi-core. It weighs more, costs more, and yet doesn’t have Touch ID.

Both the 12-inch MacBook and the MacBook Pro without Touch Bar are overdue for updates. (Have I mentioned that Intel has been dropping the ball lately?) Presumably, updates are coming, and when they arrive, these prices should all make more sense value-wise. But right now, the new MacBook Air is the only consumer MacBook that looks like a good deal.

A lot of people are looking at the lineup as it stands today thinking they must be missing something, because it seems obvious that most people looking for a MacBook in this price range should buy the new MacBook Air. They’re not missing anything. The new Air is exactly that: the MacBook most people should buy, and exactly the MacBook everyone has been asking Apple to make. ★

More than 20,000 Google employees and contractors in Google
offices located in 50 cities worldwide walked out for real change
at 11:10am local time protesting sexual harassment, misconduct,
lack of transparency, and a workplace culture that doesn’t work
for everyone. Nine offices have yet to report numbers, and
additional offices in Europe have planned walkouts in the coming
days. […]

Protest organizers say they were disgusted by the details of the
recent article from The New York Times which provided the latest
example of a culture of complicity, dismissiveness, and support
for perpetrators in the face of sexual harassment, misconduct,
and abuse of power. They framed the problem as part of a
longstanding pattern in a toxic work culture further amplified by
systemic racism.

Zachary Karabell, in an article for Wired under the headline “Apple Abandons the Mass Market, as the iPhone Turns Luxury”:

As its market cap hovers near $1 trillion, Apple has gradually
been shifting its strategy away from grabbing ever-more market
share and focusing instead on dominating the higher end of its
markets. If there were even a small doubt about that, the recent
results made it screamingly clear.

When has Apple ever had a different strategy than focusing on dominating the higher end of its markets and ignoring sheer market share? The iPod — maybe — was a market share leader, depending on how you defined its category. But even with iPods Apple clearly was determined to dominate the higher end of the market.

I think it’s impossible to overstate the importance of Apple’s
retail business. The growth in stores — both in the number of
outlets and the size and architectural prominence of the flagship
locations — is a physical manifestation of Apple’s market share
growth in device sales. Luxury retailers have long done this.
Think about brands like Tiffany, Gucci, Hermès, Louis Vuitton.
Their retail stores are physical manifestations of the brands. But
Apple’s brand of luxury is mass market luxury. Apple’s stores are
crowded. They’re bustling. They’re loud. And they’re inclusive,
not exclusive.

It’s been a long 7 years since I wrote that, but every word remains just as true today.

Friday, 2 November 2018

Justin O’Beirne has a detailed look at what’s new in Apple’s limited rollout (big parts of California, a few counties in western Nevada) of all-new maps in iOS 12:

Unless they’re already listed on Yelp, none of the shapes Apple
has added appear in its search results or are labeled on its map.
And this is a problem for Apple because AR is all about labels —
but Apple’s new map is all about shapes.

So is Apple making the right map?

O’Beirne’s keen observation is this: even in the areas where Apple’s new maps have rolled out, Google is still far ahead in correctly identifying places and specific destinations. And that might be the most important thing for maps to get right going forward. As usual, his piece is exquisitely well-written, designed, and illustrated.

Some job news (thread): After 4(!) amazing years at @wirecutter,
I’m leaving for a new editorial position at Apple (Mac App Store
Editor!) focused on helping Mac users discover and get more out of
great Mac apps. (It’s like Mac Gems redux :) )

Apple is a great place to work, and the App Store teams are producing (and commissioning) excellent work. This is good for Apple, good for App Store users, good for developers whose quality apps are getting editorial attention, and good for these talented writers and editors, job-wise.

But.

A ton of the top talent in the Apple media world now works at Apple, un-bylined and without credit. Many of them came from Macworld. In addition to the folks who’ve gone to work at Apple full-time, there are others who are writing as freelancers for App Store features. I don’t blame Apple for hiring greattalent and I don’t blame anyone for taking a well-paying, secure job at Apple (or accepting well-paying freelance work).

But I don’t think this is a good thing for the Apple media world. The talent pool writing about Apple products and platforms from outside the company’s walls is getting noticeably shallower. And on a personal level, this trend is not good for me, because I can’t link to App Store articles, because they’re not on the web. They only exist within the App Store apps. I can’t link to some of the best pieces being written these days about indie iOS and Macs apps — and that’s a little weird. And none of these pieces are archived publicly.

Thursday, 1 November 2018

Let me be clear, for those who enjoy heedless media speculation:
The Recode brand remains the same; the Code conferences remain the
same; the podcasts remain the same; the television specials we do
with MSNBC remain the same. And I am not going anywhere either,
because Recode has allowed me — whatever the medium — the great
gift of being able to do what journalists are supposed to do.
Which is to say, to use an old journalism bromide: Afflict the
comfortable and comfort the afflicted.

You wanted more Moltz, you get more Moltz. Our thoughts and observations on Apple’s “There’s More in the Making” event at the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and the products they announced: new MacBook Airs, Mac Minis, iPad Pros, and Apple Pencil.

Brought to you by:

The Apple Watch Triathlete: Pre-order the How to Train like an IronMan with Apple Watch e-book before December 3 and save 60 percent with promo code thetalkshow.

Wednesday, 31 October 2018

Jonathan Morrison set up a blind display comparison between the iPhone XR and Xiaomi Pocophone. Both displays are 6.1 inches, both are LCDs, but the Pocophone is 1080p (1080 × 2246 pixels, 403 PPI) and the XR is not (1792 × 828, 326 PPI).

Good explanation from Rene Ritchie on the many nuances involved comparing the iPhone XS and XR displays. It’s a lot more complicated than “OLED is better”, and it’s just plain nonsense that the 326 pixels per inch is not enough to make for a great display.

Tuesday, 30 October 2018

Take advantage of the all-screen design of the new iPad Pro by
building your app with the iOS 12.1 SDK and making sure it appears
correctly with the display’s rounded corners and home indicator.
Learn about the new common inset compatibility mode and what it
means for apps running in multitasking mode. Find out how to
provide support for Face ID and for the second generation Apple
Pencil with its double-tap feature.

One change is that these new iPads don’t have a 4:3 (1.33:1) aspect ratio. The aspect ratio is 199:139, which works out to about 1.43:1 — a little wider in landscape than 1.33:1.

The video also has a great overview of the ways third-party apps can use the double-tap gesture on the new Apple Pencil.

I am genuinely shocked by how poor the overall security of these
devices are, even more so when you see that these endpoints have
been known for years and relatively well documented.

I usually would have worked directly with Google to reboot these
issues if they had not previously disclosed, but due to the sheer
amount of prior work online and committed code in their own
codebase, it is obvious they know.

Very strange — you can cause any of these devices to reboot or forget their wireless network with a simple curl one-liner. You have to be on the same local network, but still.

Monday, 29 October 2018

It was huge news among the small number of people who could be
called computer nerds at the time — people like Paul Allen, who
was working as a programmer for Honeywell in Boston.

When he bought a copy of the January 1975 issue of Popular
Electronics at the Out of Town newsstand in Harvard Square, with
the Altair on the cover, he and an old friend — a Harvard
sophomore named Bill Gates — got excited. Immediately, they knew
they wanted to try to make the Altair run BASIC, a language they’d
both learned in its original timeshared-via-Teletype form at the
Lakeside School in Seattle.

Actually, Allen had been ruminating about the possibility of
building his own BASIC even before he knew about the Altair.
“There hadn’t been attempts to write a full-blown programming
language for a microprocessor,” he explains. “But when the chips
leading up to the 8080 processor became available, I realized we
could write a program for it that would be powerful enough to
run BASIC.”

For those of us of a certain age, a BASIC prompt was what you’d expect to see when you turned any computer on.

Now we get to do that again: Halide 1.11 will let you take
Portrait mode photos of just about anything, not just people.

We do this by grabbing the focus pixel disparity map and running
the image through our custom blur. When you open Halide on iPhone
XR, simply tap ‘Depth’ to enable depth capture. Any photo you take
will have a depth map, and if there’s sufficient data to determine
a foreground and background, the image will get beautifully
rendered bokeh, just like iPhone XS shots.

You’ll notice that enabling the Depth Capture mode does not allow
you to preview Portrait blur effect or even automatically detect
people. Unfortunately, the iPhone XR does not stream depth data in
realtime, so we can’t do a portrait preview. You’ll have to review
your portrait effects after having taken the photo, much like the
Google Pixel.

I’m so glad Halide offers this, but I can see why Apple hasn’t enabled it for non-human subjects in the built-in Camera app. It’s hit or miss. But when it hits it can look great. What you want to do is let Halide handle the focus blurring; if you don’t like the result, disable “Depth” for that shot in Halide.

With frequent updates and support for the latest iPhone hardware, Halide has established itself as an essential app for serious iPhone photography. Doesn’t hurt that it’s a beautiful app, either.

Electric vehicles will always be more costly than fuel-burners, according to a senior BMW executive. “No, no, no,” is Klaus Fröhlich’s reply when asked if EVs will ever equal the prices of equivalent conventional cars. “Never.”

Sunday, 28 October 2018

My thanks to Audio Memos Pro for sponsoring Daring Fireball last week. Audio Memos Pro is the pro voice recorder for iPhone and iPad (and Apple Watch can be used as a remote control). Interviews, lectures, business meetings, even music sessions — Audio Memos is great for recording anything. And it’s not just about recording — Audio Memos Pro lets you keep a library of recordings organized with tags. You can attach photos to recordings, make annotations at time stamps, and more.

Audio Memos just celebrated its 10th anniversary on the App Store. Join the million of users who have recorded with it. Get it before Monday evening and save 10 percent off the regular price.

Friday, 26 October 2018

The New York Times story contains numerous inaccuracies about my
employment at Google and wild exaggerations about my compensation.
Specifically, I never coerced a woman to have sex in a hotel room.
These false allegations are part of a smear campaign to disparage
me during a divorce and custody battle. Also, I am deeply troubled
that anonymous Google executives are commenting about my personnel
file and misrepresenting the facts.

Thursday, 25 October 2018

Tech Solidarity is endorsing thirteen candidates for Congress. Each of them is a first-time progressive candidate with no ties to the political establishment, an excellent campaign team, and a clear path to victory in a poor, rural district that is being ignored by the national Democratic Party. None of the candidates takes money from corporations.

In the third quarter of 2018, the Great Slate raised $1.18M for our candidates. Let’s keep the momentum going into the election!

These are great candidates for Congress. No corporate money. Progressive agendas. Ignored (mostly) by the national Democratic Party. And fighting for seats in districts that in years past sometimes didn’t even field a Democratic candidate. Republicans simply ran unopposed.

I’m particularly impressed by Jess King, who is running in district PA-11 in nearby Lancaster, PA. I have close family who live in that district. I don’t just like her as a candidate — I really do think she can win. If you listen to her talk or read what she writes, she sounds like a real human being, not a full of shit politician. Jess King is smart, informed, and empathetic, and she’s out there every day talking to the citizens in her district. She’s held 52 town halls and counting during this election. Her opponent, Rep. Lloyd Smucker (that’s his name, I swear) has not held a single town hall in over 600 days. He is taking his reelection for granted as a supposedly “safe” Republican seat. I say to hell with that, no seat is safe.

King, a former economic development nonprofit director, has raised nearly 100 percent of her funds from individuals while refusing to accept money from corporations’ political action committees.

The majority of Smucker’s funds, meanwhile, have come from PACs representing corporations such as General Electric, Exelon, Koch Industries and Williams, the company that recently built the Atlantic Sunrise pipeline going through Lancaster County.

I’ve donated to The Great Slate before, and today my wife and I donated another $1,000. It’s easy — they even support Apple Pay. By default your contribution is distributed between all 13 candidates, but you can distribute it however you choose if there’s a particular candidate you want to get behind. They’ve set a goal to raise $1,000,000, and they’re currently sitting at $952,154.

I would love to see this link from Daring Fireball help them blow past that goal. If you can give a lot, do it. If you can only give $10, do it! Every single dollar helps — I mean this so sincerely I just used an exclamation point. If you’re feeling like me — anxious about this upcoming election, deeply concerned because the stakes are so high — donating to The Great Slate is one of the most effective ways you can make a difference today.